Refactor Your Retrospectives

Transcription

1 Refactor Your Retrospectives Rachel Davies

2 My background Background in software development Started using XP in 2000 Working as independent agile coach since 2003 Co-author of Agile Coaching with Liz Sedley

3 What is a Retrospective? A meeting where a team looks back on a past period of work so that they can learn from their experience and apply this learning to future work

4 Why Retrospectives? Without retrospectives you will find that the team keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. Henrik Kniberg Scrum & XP from the Trenches

5 Raise your hand if.. You have been in a retrospective? You have facilitated a retrospective? You ve been in a retrospective that had made a difference to your team? You ve been in a retrospective that had no positive impact?

6 Agile Retrospectives Timeline OOPSLA workshop Retrospectives Facilitator Gathering Retrospectives in XP teams Scrum Gathering CSM Esther Derby / Scrum Alliance

7 In Scrum Lifecycle

8 Challenge with Heartbeat Retros Short time to get actions done, hooked into sprint cycle with unclear priorities No professional neutral facilitator Following poor retrospective process

9 Sharing Some Stats How long are your retrospectives? How often are your retrospectives? How many actions do you generate? How many actions get done?

10 Round 1 Work in pairs to write down an initial retrospective meeting timeline and mark on activities with timings Warning! We ll be refactoring this so expect some critique with the aim of improving your initial design

11 Meetings require pre-work and follow up! Hard to learn about creating effective retrospective by being a participant

12 Round 2 Swap your pair, now.. Add in checklists: for preparation before meeting follow up after meeting

13 Retrospective Smells

14 No time to improve!

15 Living in the past Looking back into the past, no time to discuss future.

16 Judging Went well? Do different?

17 Cloudy Thinking Not clear on what to do, nothing happens

18 Fixing Symptoms No root-cause analysis

19 Blaming Criticizing others, not taking responsibility for solution

20 Unconnected Ideas Team comes up with many ideas. Lack of buy-in from team members.

21 Thinking too big! Be realistic! How much can you really do?

22 No owner When no one on team champions a change, it gets forgotten

23 Always the Same Owner ScrumMaster takes on actions for the team.

24 Invisible Actions Actions from retrospective not visible to team or Product Owner.

25 Activities that trivialize

26 Picking on people Maintain safety

27 Summary of Retrospective Smells Same set of actions come up but not done Vague, no owner, too big Not touching real issues If this continues then you waste time of participants!

28 Have you experienced any of these retrospective smells? Any more to add?

29 Round 3 Back to original pair Anything you want to change about your design?

30 Anatomy of Retrospectives

31 Bridge between Sprints What happened? What to change? Sprint x Sprint x+1

32 Balancing Conversation

33 Structure Flow of Conversation From Agile Coaching book And improved team working agreements

34 Incomplete Actions Before creating any new actions, see if old actions are Done. Take time to understand why actions are not finished.

35 Slow Down! People will not talk if you do not listen to them Invite everyone to share what happened Take time to gather the whole story Involve each member of the team Forget about making lists of what went well, etc.

36 Gather Data in a Timeline To remember what happened To integrate different perspectives on events To find an area to work on Not to categorize and keep as a record

37 Create a Gallery Ask team members to draw their own picture of what it felt like working on the last sprint If pictures are too weird use a template

38 Agree a Focus Focus in on an issue that s causing the most pain to the team Voting can help but beware of disagreements within the team

39 Make Time for Ideas Encourage ideas from your team Consider more than one solution!

40 Action Plans What steps will be taken in our next sprint towards solving the problem? Who will check up to make sure the action is implemented? Make actions visible during Sprint: Allow time in plan Put on team board Remember in daily standup meeting

41 Apply Agile Planning Techniques Break down into tasks small enough to fit in iteration cycle Prioritize along with other work, understand velocity (or level of service for process improvement) based on value Track and review progress same as agile work

42 Experiment with your Retrospectives! Retrospectives are about learning from experience Experiment and adapt the format to generate new insights

43 Round 4 Swap your pair Apply Half & Half refactoring Any further adjustments?

44 Feedback? Contact info: Twitter: rachelcdavies Blog:

45 References Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews by Norman L. Kerth. ISBN Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby & Diana Larsen. ISBN Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka. ISBN Agile Coaching by Rachel Davies & Liz Sedley. ISBN